At three o'clock the next afternoon, Nina Carter, leaving the
Hawkes' mansion in New York City, with a great many laughing
farewells, descended to her father's waiting car, and discovered,
sitting therein, an extremely handsome young woman, furred and
trimly veiled, and deep in pleasant conversation with Hansen.

"Miss Harriet!" Nina ejaculated, in a tone that betrayed a vague
resentment as well as a definite surprise.

"Nina, dear!" Harriet accepted Nina's kiss warmly. "Are you glad
to see me?" And as Nina stumbled in, and established herself,
Harriet continued easily, "Your father and I had a talk, my dear,
and he suggested that I come back for awhile. So Hansen picked me
up at the office, and here I am! He tried to telephone you, I
know, but you were out. And now," said Harriet, glancing at her
wrist watch, "I think we will go right home, please, Hansen!"

Nina had been her own mistress for several delicious weeks, and to
have any sort of restriction again was very unpalatable to her.
Harriet could almost have laughed at her discomfiture, although
she was sorry for her, too. Nina smiled and listened with notable
effort; Harriet knew she was chagrined.

She sulked all the way home, and Madame Carter, meeting them at
Crownlands, gazed rather stonily at the newcomer, granting her
only the briefest greeting. But oh, how homelike and welcoming the
beautiful place, mantled in snow, looked to Harriet's eyes. The
snapping fires, the warmth and fragrance of the big rooms, and the
very obvious welcome of the maids, all were enchanting to her. Her
first duty was to make a brief tour below stairs, after which she
went up to her own room.

When they returned from Huntington in the fall, she and Nina at
Richard's suggestion had taken Isabelle's handsome rooms, turning
both into bedrooms, and sharing the dressing rooms and bath that
joined them. It was here that Harriet found Nina awaiting her,
still with her hat on, and loitering with obvious discomfiture.
There had been no actual changes in her room except that the
personal touch was gone. Bottomley had put her bags here, and Nina
spoke first of them.

"Yes, I got that this morning; isn't it stunning?" Harriet eyed
its shiny blackness with satisfaction. "I had to get a gown or
two," she added, "and some little things! We've been so quiet at
Mrs. Davenport's that I hadn't any new clothes. Pip was ill, you
know."

"Miss Harriet!" Nina said with a rush. "You're so sweet about
things like this, I wonder if you will mind taking the yellow
guest room--it's really much larger--and leaving this room? You
see when I have friends--"

Harriet, at the dressing table, had raised her hands to remove her
hat. Like any general, she realized the crisis of the apparently
unimportant moment, and met it by instinct.

"Do you know, I'm afraid I shan't be so very kind!" Harriet said,
briskly. "You're one of my duties here, you know, little girl, and
I think Daddy would prefer to have me near you! Now, if you like
to ask him, perhaps he'll not agree with me; in which case I shall
move immediately! But meanwhile--" She picked up a thick book from
the table, read the title idly: "'Secret Memoirs of the Favourites
of the French Courts!' Where on earth did you get this?" she
asked, surprised. '"Five Dollars Net,'" she mused, glancing
through it. "How well I know this sort of rubbish! There are
thousands of them on the market, exquisitely printed, beautifully
bound, and just so much--rot! Secret memoirs of the favourites of
the French Courts indeed! Most of them hadn't the brains to write
a decent note!" scoffed Harriet, cheerfully.

Nina's face was scarlet; she left the room abruptly. A moment or
two later Harriet sauntered into the adjoining room, and found her
again. The younger girl was assuming a ruffled and beribboned
negligee, and tossing her wraps and street dress about carelessly.
Harriet noted this with disapproving eyes, but said nothing. There
was an immense picture of Mrs. Tabor on the dressing table, and
she found in that a sudden solution of the strange change in Nina.

"'With Ladybird's unending devotion, to Ninette,'" read Harriet,
from the inky scrawl across the picture. "Do you call her
Ladybird, Nina? You and she have formed a pretty strong
friendship, haven't you?"

"Oh, something more than that!" Nina drawled in her new manner.
But, being Nina, she could not resist the desire to display the
new possession. She jerked open a desk drawer, and Harriet saw
thick letters, still in their envelopes, and tied in bundles. "We
write each other almost every day!" said Nina, yawning, as she
flung herself down upon a couch, and reached for a book.

"I should fancy she would make a loyal friend," Harriet observed,
generously. Nina softened a little, although her voice was still
carefully bored and arrogant when she spoke:

It was one of Mrs. Tabor's phrases, Harriet recognized. She moved
easily about the room, picking up other handsome, superbly
illustrated volumes: "An American Woman in the Sultan's Harem," "A
Favourite of Kings."

"Does she have my room when she is here?" Harriet presently
suggested, sympathetically. "Now, my dear," she added, as Nina's
quick self-conscious and hostile look gave consent, "Mrs. Tabor is
too thoroughly acquainted with convention to blame you if your
father keeps you under a governess's eye for a little while
longer. You're the most precious thing your father has, Nina, and
as I used to remind you years ago, you don't begin to have the
restrictions that the European princesses have to bear!"

This view of the case was always pleasing to Nina's vanity; she
was quite clever enough to see that a friend protected and
confined, watched and valued, would lose no prestige with the
charming "Ladybird." She pouted; and Harriet saw that for the
moment the battle was hers.

"Oh, she has the most wonderful clothes!" It was the old Nina's
voice. "She doesn't spend much, but she goes to the best places,
and they know her there, and the women at Hatson's will say, 'I've
got a gown for you, Mrs. Tabor!' She picked out this negligee, and
she picked out another gown for me that you haven't seen. That was
one thing that made trouble between her and her husband," Nina
said, eagerly. "She can't help looking smart, and he used to get
so jealous, and she told me that she told the judge exactly what
she spent for clothes the last year, and he said that that was
less than his wife spent, mind you, and he said he didn't know how
she did it! And that was the judge, that had never laid eyes on
her before! She used to cry and cry, after she got her divorce,
because she said that she thought there was a sort of disgrace
about it. But this judge in Nevada said that a man like Jack Tabor
ought to be horsewhipped!"

"Oh, lots! She loves to be here, and I can't think why," Nina
said, "because people are all crazy to get her, and she could go
to the most wonderful dinners and things. But she really is just
like a girl, herself; sometimes we burst right out laughing,
because we think exactly the same about things! And she just loves
picnics, and to let her hair down--and she's so funny! You'll just
love her when you know her--"

Nina, Harriet reflected, had had a thorough dose of poison. It
would take, like many diseases, more poison to cure her, a counter
dose. Going to her room to change to one of the new gowns, Harriet
had a moment of contempt for the new-found intimate, who could so
unscrupulously play upon the girl's hungry soul. But with this
situation it was possible to cope; there was definite comfort in
the fact that Nina had not mentioned Royal Blondin.

Brave in the new gown, whose lustreless black velvet made even
more brilliant her matchless skin, Harriet went to find Ward. She
met instead one of his house-guests, Corey Eaton, a man some years
older than Ward, a big, rawboned, unscrupulous youth, with a wild
and indiscriminate laugh. Mr. Eaton, greeting her
enthusiastically, admitted frankly that he was just up from bed,
and that he had been "lit up like a battleship" last night, and
that he still felt the effects of it.

"Mr. Eaton," Harriet said, in an undertone, making another
strategic decision, "come in here to the library, will you? I want
to speak to you."

"When you speak to me thus," said Corey Eaton, passionately, "I
can refuse you naught!"

But he sobered instantly into tremendous gravity at Harriet's
first confidence. She told him simply of Isabelle's death.

"Well, that surely is rotten--the poor old boy!" said Corey,
affectionately. "Ward's mad about his mother, too! Well, say, what
do you know about that? We'll beat it, Miss Field, Nixon and I. We
came in my car and we'll go to the Jays' for dinner. Say, that is
tough, though, isn't it?"

It was not eloquent, but it was sincere, and Harriet made her
thanks so personal and so flattering that the young man could only
fervently push his plans for departure, swearing secrecy, and
evidently touched by being taken into her confidence. The
fastnesses were yielding one after another; Harriet could have
laughed as she left him at the foot of the stairs. Bottomley
respectfully addressed her as she turned back into the hall:

She nodded, and accompanied him instantly into the pantry where
they could be alone.

"It's Madame," said Bottomley, bitterly, "she's just 'ad me up
there agine, it's really tryin'--that's what it is. It's tryin'!
Now she'ad to'ave her say about you bein' at table, Miss Field. I
says that you 'ad stipulited that you was to be there. Now, I
says, and I says it arbitrarily like, and yet I says it
respectful, too---"

"Now, just wait one moment, Bottomley," Harriet said, soothingly.
"I want to talk to you and Pilgrim. Is she in her room? Suppose we
go there?"

Pleased with the consideration in her manner, the outraged
Bottomley led the way. Mrs. Bottomley was enjoying a solitary cup
of tea; she bustled hospitably for more cups.

"I want to tell you that your comin' has taken a load off my
soul," said Pilgrim, a gray, round-visaged woman who had a
sentimental heart," and so I said to Mr. Carter not three days
since! I know that Bottomley," said Pilgrim with an Englishwoman's
admiring look for her lord, "would never have spoke so harsh if he
had but known you might come back. It's been very bad, indeed,
Miss, since you went, as we was tellin' you a bit back. Impudence,
orders this way and that, confusion and what not, and Mr. Ward
very wild, really very wild, and so at last Bottomley said he
couldn't stand it."

"I'm hoping he will reconsider that," Harriet said, pleasantly,
with a glance at the face Bottomley tried to make inflexible. "For
I'm going to tell you two old friends some news. We have always
been friends, haven't we?" said Harriet.

"It would be 'ard to be anything else, and I've said it before
this! It's a different 'ouse with you in it!" Bottomley said.
Pilgrim, rocking to and fro, clasped Harriet's hand to her breast,
and beamed. With no further preamble Harriet announced Isabelle's
death.

The servants were naturally shocked. There were a few moments of
ejaculatory and sorrowful surprise. Her that was so young and so
'andsome, and went off so bold and high! It didn't seem possible,
so far away from 'ome and all.

"I'm going to tell you two something," she began. "You are the
very first to know, and I know you'll be glad. Before I left the
house last October, Mr. Carter did me the--the great honour to ask
me to--to marry him."

It gave her inward delight even to voice it; it made the miracle
seem more real. Bottomley and Pilgrim exchanged stupefied glances
in a dead silence.

"I met him at eleven o'clock to-day," Harriet finished. simply,
"and we drove to Greenwich in Connecticut, and we were married at
one o'clock."

Bottomley and Pilgrim glanced again at each other, glanced at
Harriet, opened their mouths slowly.

Then Pilgrim dropped the hand she was familiarly caressing, and
Bottomley rose slowly to his feet.

"Oh, no!" Harriet said, flushing in utter confusion and with a
nervous laugh. "Oh, please! Please sit down, Bottomley, and please
don't either of you think that it has made any difference.
Although I am Mrs. Carter now, I'm still Miss Nina's companion!"

"Oh, sh--sh--sh! You mustn't say it even!" Harriet caught both
their hands. "No one must know. I only told you so that you would
help me, so that you would understand! There will be no change,
anywhere--"

Bottomley shook a dazed head; but Pilgrim looked at the other
woman with kindly eyes, and presently said:

"Well, now, it's hard on you, so young and pretty and all, and
goin' right on as if you wasn't married a bit!"

Harriet only smiled, but she blinked black lashes that the little
touch of sympathy had suddenly made wet. And presently when
Bottomley was gone, and she about to follow him, she laid one hand
on Pilgrim's broad black alpaca shoulder, and said:

"I had my own reasons, Pilgrim, you know. Reasons that make it all
seem--right, to me!"

"Well, why wouldn't you?" Pilgrim said, approvingly. "You'd have
been a very silly girl not to take him, and--as I always tell the
girls--love'll come fast enough afterwards!"

The words came back to Harriet, hours later, when the house was
quiet, and when, comfortably wrapped in a loose silk robe, she was
musing beside her fire. Nina was asleep; to Ward, who was headachy
and feverish, she had paid a late visit. He had been sick enough,
after the revel of Christmas Eve, to summon a doctor to-day; and
was dozing restlessly now, under the effect of a sedative. Madame
Carter had not come down to dinner, and when Harriet had sent in a
message, had asked to be excused from any calls, even from Nina
and Miss Field, this evening.

Nina had chattered constantly during the meal. Granny had had a
terrible time with them all. And Ward and Nina and "Royal"--the
name suddenly leaped between them again--had been arrested for
speeding. And Daddy had threatened Nina with a boarding-school,
and Granny had cried.

"Ladybird and I are planning a trip," Nina had further confided.
"I shall be eighteen in February, you know, and we want to go
round the world. Would'nt it be wonderful to go with her, for
she's been about fifty times!"

"You know"-and Nina, in good spirits, had put her arm about
Harriet as they left the table--"you know, some day I'd love to do
it with you!" she had said, soothingly. "And some day we will, for
I mean to travel a great deal. But just now--she spoke of it, you
know. And it would be such an unusual opportunity. We're going to
Algiers--and Athens--Mr. Blondin is making out the list for us,
and wouldn't it be fun if he could go, too? He's afraid he can't,
but if he could--!"

"Father--" Nina had shrugged regretfully. "But I shall be of age!"
she had reminded her companion.

"Yes, I know, dear, but Father's ward for another three years, you
know!"

"Why, Ladybird says"--the girl had been ready, and had spoken with
flushed cheeks--"Ladybird says that in that case we'll go anyway,
and she'll pay all expenses! That's the kind of friend she is!"

And Nina had flounced to a telephone, and had telephoned her
friend in New York, laughing, coquetting, and murmuring for a
blissful half hour.

"Love'll come fast enough afterward!" Pilgrim had said, and
Harriet thought Pilgrim was rather a wise woman, in her homely
way. The girl stirred the fire and settled herself to watch it
again.

After what? Well, certainly not after anything so short, simple,
and unconvincing as that three minutes with the clergyman to-day.
The utter unreality of that had seemed to blend with the silent,
snowy day, and with the dulled and dreamy condition of her own
brain. Snow was falling softly when she had met Richard Carter at
the office, at half-past ten, and snow lisped against the windows
of the limousine as they two, with Irving Fox, Richard's kindly,
middle-aged, confidential clerk, were whirled out of the city, and
on and on through the bare little wintry towns. They had all
talked together, sometimes of herself and her sister, sometimes of
Nina and Ward, of Fox's amazing grandchildren, and of business.
Fox had had some papers to which they occasionally referred; the
old clerk was the only person to congratulate Harriet warmly when
the brief and bewildering business was over and she had her
wedding ring. It was alone with Fox that she made the return trip.
Richard came back by train, saving an hour, and was at the office
when they got there. Harriet did not see him again; he was in
conference; and presently she quietly got back into the motor-car,
and on her way to meet Nina she slipped the plain circle of gold
into her hand bag.

She had it out to-night, and put it on her bare, pretty hand, and
held it to the fire, and slowly the events of the bewildering and
tiring day wheeled before her, and only the reality of the ring
assured her that it was not all a confused dream. Married! And all
alone before the glowing coals, weary from hostile encounters, on
her marriage night! Ward, to be sure, was always her champion, but
Ward was drinking heavily just now, and her influence was none the
stronger because he admired her while she held him at arm's-
length. Nina was all ready to flame into defiance, and the old
lady's message had not been reassuring.

"But Bottomley and Pilgrim will stand by me!" Harriet said, with a
shaky laugh. She looked about the beautiful familiar room, the
room that had been Isabelle's for so many years, and wondered to
think of Isabelle, lying dead so far away, and a usurper already
holding her name and place.

She had intended to write to Linda to-night; Linda was vexed with
her, and small wonder! For Harriet had left the little New Jersey
house almost without farewells, had come down to an earlier
breakfast even than Fred's, and had said briefly that she was
returning to the Carters, and would see them all soon.

Why hadn't she told Linda? Well, for one reason, she had hardly
believed her own memory of the talk on Christmas Day with Richard.
Then she had feared opposition, feared Linda's shocked references
to decent intervals of mourning; Linda's frank unbelief that there
was no strong personal feeling involved on Richard's part; Linda's
advice to a bride.

Harriet's face burned at the mere thought of it. No, she couldn't
tell Linda yet; she was too tired to write to-night, anyway. Linda
and Fred had not been at all approving, Christmas night. David had
reproached her, had disappeared earlier than was expected or
necessary; they had not failed of their suspicions.

"Well! I must go to bed," she said aloud, suddenly. She stood, one
elbow on the mantel, her beautiful eyes fixed on the dying fire.
It was midnight, the room and the house very still. Outside the
snow was still falling--falling. Her loose gown slipped back from
the round young arm, fell in folds about the slender figure; her
rich hair was braided, and hung in a rope of gold over one
shoulder. Her smoke-blue eyes, heavy-lidded in a rather white
face, met their own gaze in the mirror. "It isn't exactly what I
expected marriage to be," mused Harriet, smiling at the exquisite
vision upon which no other eyes would fall. "But after all," she
said to herself, beginning to move about with last preparations
for bed, "I'm married to the man I love--nothing can change that.
And if he doesn't love me, he likes me. I've done nothing wrong,
and if my life is just a little different from most women's, why,
I shall have to make the best of it! And I did tell him--I did
tell him--"

And her thoughts went back to the first few minutes she had spent
in Richard's office that day. They had been alone, discussing the
last details of their astonishing plan, when she had suddenly
taken the plunge.

"Mr. Carter, there is just one thing! Of course," Harriet's cheeks
had flamed, "of course, this marriage of ours is not the usual
marriage, and yet, there is just one thing of which I would like
to speak to you before we--we go up to Greenwich." And finding his
gray eyes pleasantly fixed upon her she had gone on, confused but
determined: "I'm twenty-seven now-and perhaps I might have married
some other man before this--except that-when I was seventeen-I did
fall in love with a man! And we were to be married--!" She had
stopped short; it was incredibly hard. "He had--or I thought he
had, brought something tremendously big and wonderful into my
life," Harriet had continued, "and I was a stupid little girl,
just taking care of my sister's babies and reading my father's
books--"

"You are under no obligation to tell me anything of this," Richard
had said, kindly, far more concerned for her distress than
interested in what she was saying. "I must have known that there
were admirers! I assure you that--"

"No, but just a moment!" Harriet had interrupted him. "I was
infatuated--I knew that at once, God knows I've known it ever
since! I went away with him, little fool that I was!"

A gleam of genuine surprise had come into Richard Carter's eyes,
and he looked at her without speaking.

"I was taken ill the day I left with him. While I was getting well
I had time to think it over. I knew then I was too young and too
ignorant to be any man's wife. I was frightened and I--well, I ran
away; I went back to my sister. Both she and her husband regarded
me after that as in some way marked, unprincipled, unworthy--"

"Poor child!" Richard had said. "They naturally would. You were no
more than Nina's age!"

"So that's my history," Harriet had finished, simply. "I thought I
had done with men. And there have been men, men like Ward, for
instance, to whom I could have been married without feeling that I
need make any mention of that old time. But I wanted to tell you."

"Thank you very much," Richard had said, gravely. "If the
protection of my name and my house seems welcome to you, after
some battling with the world, it will be an additional
satisfaction to me."

And then before another word was spoken Fox had come in,
announcing the car, and they had begun the long, strange drive.
And now, deep in the quiet winter night, she was back at
Crownlands, alone beside her fire, able at last to rest, and to
remember. It seemed to her that ever since Richard's call on
Linda's Christmas household yesterday she had walked strangely
detached and isolated, with odd booming noises in her ears, and a
panicky thumping at her heart. Now she felt suddenly safe and
secure again; none of the oppositions she had vaguely feared, from
David, from Linda, from the family at Crownlands, had interrupted
the mad plan; she was in a stronger position now than ever, and if
the path before her was dangerous and difficult, she was not too
weary to-night to feel confident of following it to the end.

She got into the luxurious bed, put out the bedside light, and lay
with her hands clasped behind her head, thinking. The clock struck
one; snow was still falling steadily outside, but in here the last
pink glow of firelight flickered and sank--flickered and sank
lazily. It touched the flowered basket chairs, the roses that
filled a bowl on the bookshelf, the table with its shaded lamp and
its magazines.

Some sudden thought made Harriet smile ruefully. She indicated
that it was unwelcome by turning over to bury her bright head in
the pillow, and resolutely composing herself for sleep.